Mechanical Marvel
by Calorimeter
Summary: The familiar feeling of power washed over her. Story is better than summary.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: Although this is not directly set in the world of OMF, I hope you enjoy it. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

Charlotte chewed a nail, and a crescent of keratin fell to the floor. Momentarily distracted from calculus homework, she berated herself for undoing her resolve to trim her nails only with a clipper. She heaved a frustrated sigh and turned her focus back to the set of problems. T_he integral of udv equals uv minus the integral of v du. Tell me how that makes things simpler. More importantly, why do I have to take calculus even as an English major? Parents…_ She studied the examples for the umpteenth time, wishing that the book and professor had demonstrated some harder ones before turning the students loose with this gibberish.

A half hour ticked past, and her frustration grew. She slammed the offending textbook shut. _Maybe rollerblading will clear my head. _As she put her materials away,she glanced at her clock, and it read 6:45. Her stomach rumbled, and she tried to shut it up. _No! Ketter closed fifteen minutes ago. What am I going to eat? _She rummaged through her food supplies and settled on an old apple and some peanut butter crackers. The apple was old and mushy, but it tasted sweet. The crackers, however, were basically fossilized; she managed to choke down half of one before throwing the package across the room with a frustrated growl that rose to a scream.

An odd sensation flowed through her, starting with her fingertips. As unsettling as it was, it also piqued her curiosity, and she tried to analyze what it was doing to her. As her thoughts tumbled over each other, one theme emerged. Power. POWER. Despite her previous hunger, she felt that she could take on the world. An impulse took over, and she stood up and did a flip, somehow not hitting anything in her tiny dorm room. _Since when do I do flips without a trampoline?_ As her knees flexed to absorb the shock of the landing, white specks formed at the edge of her vision for a moment and then disappeared.

The feeling of power passed, leaving Charlotte standing and scratching her head in bewilderment. _What on earth was that?_ A feeling of awe settled over her. How did all that occur? The feeling passed as her stomach reminded her that an apple a day was not nearly enough brain food for a student. Her own food stocks were empty, so she raided her roommate's stash and had ravioli with peanut butter for dessert. She made a mental note to tell her roommate about her theft and offer to reay her.

Thus fortified, she turned back to her homework. After reading her literature assignment, she tackled the dreaded integration by parts. It made a little more sense now, and she easily worked through the first seven problems. When the next few didn't go as smoothly, she decided to go to the math lab for help. There was still an hour and change left before it was finished for the night, so she could get quite a bit more problems completed. She arrived in the classroom, signed in, and set her stuff on the table next to her favorite tutor, Cryss.

"What seems to be the problem, Charlotte?" she asked.

"Integration by parts is still, by and large, an impenetrable mystery to me. Professor Lang always shows the easy ones in class and then assigns the monster problems. I don't even understand the practical value of the process."

"Well, integration by parts is used to determine whether or not an operator is Hermitian. You'll come across it in-" Cryss started to explain in detail, but Charlotte cut her off.

"I'm an English major. Remember? This class has no application in my world."

"Well, why are you taking it then?"

"My parents really wanted me to pursue something in the sciences, so they weren't thrilled that I chose English. They said that if I wanted help with college expenses, I would have to take certain courses in addition to those required by my major, and calculus was one of them."

"Ah. No reason to slack off, though, so let's get to it."

Charlotte was still confused by some of the finer details of the process, but by the end of math lab that night, integration by parts had become much easier to do, thanks to the patient tutor. After leaving the lab, Charlotte stopped by the library and got a book she needed for her literature class. As was her nature, she got distracted by other books in the library, so she left not only forty minutes later than she intended, but with a stack of eight books, which she somehow crammed into her bag.

She stepped into the night and took a deep breath, enjoying the cool air after an evening spent mostly indoors. She pressed the stem of her watch, and the dial lit up. Her eyes widened. Ten-twenty? She should have been back in her room sleeping by now. She pulled her bag onto her back, tightened the straps, and set off at a brisk clip. As she approached the open area of campus called "The Oak Quad," she heard shouting. She paused, swiveled her head, and then darted behind a nearby tree. She saw a number of figures partly in the shadows. How many were there? Three? Four?

The clot of people moved into the light. Charlotte counted four of them; they all were about the same height. She recognized the one who was slightly taller than the others as John, a literature classmate. He looked nervous and clutched a stack of books to his chest, while his eyes darted from person to person. His mouth was moving, but Charlotte couldn't hear anything, so she moved closer. The exchange made her breath catch in her throat.

"-don't you join the cool cats in physics and engineering if you're smart?" demanded someone with slicked-back brown hair.

"I-I can learn about it easily from a-a-a textbook. Study of literature requires l-l-lots of rereading and discussion. It works my mind in a way physics doesn't," John replied meekly.

"If physics is so easy for you, then you should have no problem with a double major," retorted Slick, as his apparent underlings slowly stepped forward.

"Th-there's a lot of writing and re-re-rewriting involved, and I'm not the fastest typer," John stammered out before continuing, "and, besides, there are a lot of interesting English classes I want to take, so even if I wanted to study physics, I wouldn't have time." As he said this, he took a large step back, turned quickly, and sprinted away. Slick and his underlings had apparently anticipated his action and took off after him. John, encumbered with his books, made for easy prey, and he was grabbed and thrown to the ground. Charlotte watched in horror as the three pummeled John; she remembered that on the first day of class, when the professor asked them, as an icebreaker, to say what fictional character they most were like, John had chosen Fezzik. In some ways it was true. John was tall, kind, and given to rhyming. He was rail-thin, and she doubted that he ever had fought anyone. The scene only confirmed her fears.

"You flame-haired freak! You're just like all the other weirdo hippie humanities kids. You can't stand out with your work, so you dye your hair to get attention," sneered Slick.

John's reply did not reach her, but Slick's words gave her an idea of what John said.

"Oh, radioactive carrot is apparently a natural hair color, and I suppose you don't use colored contacts either." The three paused in their beating and conferred among themselves before resuming the violence at an increased level. Charlotte heard a low groan, and her heart lurched. John had pulled himself to his feet during the break, and she saw his face. It was bloody and bruised, and his whole posture seemed stooped with pain. It snapped her from her stupor, and she looked around, trying to see if anyone else was watching and would try to help, but she couldn't see anyone on the quad or peering out of buildings. The closest call box was just beyond the fighting, and she didn't dare to try reaching it. The only other one that came to her stress-addled mind was at the far end of the row of upperclassmen apartments, a dangerously far distance away, she thought.

Still, she felt she had no other choice. She sprinted toward it, driven on by a sudden shout of pain from John. _Where is campus security?_ The laughter of the three reached her seconds later, turning her fear into frustration and then anger. A sensation flowed through her, and white numbers flashed in her vision. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the dark alleyway between her dormitory and the wall of the mansion next door. _What happened, and how on Earth did I get here? _She swayed as she took a step forward and nearly fell. She stood still for a few minutes to clear her head and checked her watch while she waited. _11:05? Can it be? How did I lose half an hour?_ She made her way slowly back to her room, feeling suddenly drained. She flopped onto her bed and uncharacteristically fell asleep fast, dreaming many series of strange images.


	2. Chapter 2

Charlotte awoke as a pillow hit the back of her head.

Her roommate said, "Your alarm has been going off for five minutes now. You might have an earlier class than I do, but you don't need to take it out on me."

"Well, sorry about that. I must have been in the middle of a REM cycle or something. Thanks for being backup."

"Mmph" was all she heard as her roommate buried her face into her blankets and went back to sleep. As she got ready, fragments of her dreams surfaced. _What a bizarre night. I'm so glad it's over. _A tooth broke off her comb as she pulled it through her hair, bringing to mind the dream where parts of her body fell off but somehow were reattached. She grabbed her backpack and headed to Ketter.

Excited conversations buzzed through the dining hall, and she picked up fragments as she gathered her breakfast from different buffets.

"…about time someone showed him he doesn't run campus."

"At last someone sticks up for the humanities!"

"Why would someone wear a costume and prowl around campus at that hour?"

_What's going on? I'm missing something, apparently. _Charlotte found a small table and enjoyed a book about the brain and language with her breakfast. She looked at her watch and saw that she had to get to class in seven minutes, and the English building was fairly far away. She sighed, shoved her book into her backpack, put her dishes on the conveyer, and started the trek to her classroom

Good morning, everyone. I'm Marietta Ellis with the Channel 6 news. We're here at Lapray College, investigating an interesting case of vigilante justice. Late last night, a student, John-Paul Mente, was attacked by three others. A person dressed as some sort of robot grabbed the attacking students, turning the tables on them, giving John-Paul time to get to the call box. When the campus security force arrived, they found all four students with moderate injuries and unable to stand. All four have been attended to and have been released from medical care. When interviewed by security, the ringleader of the attackers, Steffan Tommas, said that, quote, "It came from nowhere and kicked me in the stomach and then hit me in the chest with the side of its arm. I'd never seen anything like it before. It looked like a person but not quite there. Its hands and feet looked the same, like small hands with the fingers all curled up. The scariest thing happened when I thought I was far enough away to avoid attack, it threw its hands at me, and they hit me in the face and neck. It also moved very fast for something its size. I'm telling you, that thing is bizarre" end quote. Mente was unavailable for comment. Back to you in the studio, Grant.

Charlotte raced into her class, arriving with only thirty seconds to spare. Some of her students seemed surprised by her uncharacteristically late arrival. The professor, however, seemed not to notice. Since her usual spot was taken, she took the one to the left. She opened her folder and saw the empty assignment sheet facing her. _No!_ She had read the passage, but in her haste to finish calculus, she had forgotten to answer the questions. She grabbed a pencil and started scribbling down answers as fast as she could, thankful that a word or phrase would answer most. Class had technically started, but the professor seemed absorbed in her work, so Charlotte kept writing her answers, lifting her head every few seconds to see whether or not the professor was making a move to start. Finally, the professor stood up and announced,

"We're missing quite a few people, but we had better get started, because we have a lot to cover. Please pass in your assignments." Charlotte sighed and passed her sheet forward; she had only an essay question and a half remaining, but they were worth a third of the assignment's points. She wrote down the points people were discussing, but her mind was on her incomplete assignment. They were worth a significant chunk of her final grade, so she wanted to do well on them, and she often did. She mentally muttered about her calculus prof, wishing that a raincloud would form in his office or that all his tires would go flat. She didn't care about themes found in Oliver Twist.

The class was interrupted by a quiet knock on the door. The professor looked at the caller, and her eyes grew wide, but she indicated by a nod that the interruption was permitted. The person walked in and the class gasped. John-Paul looked like a wreck. His hair stuck out at different angles. One eye was black, while the other had a dark circle under it. He sported an angry red cut on a cheek, and his lower lip was swollen. Parts of his arms were wrapped in bandages, and bruises spilled out from under them. The professor finally found her voice.

"John-Paul, I heard about what happened to you last night. I wouldn't have blamed you for not coming to class today."

He responded in a low voice, "There's too much material to cover for me to miss a class, and I need a feeling of normalcy and routine now."

"Very well then. We're following the discussion outline for this section of Oliver Twist. We're on the third question." John-Paul sat in the closest seat available. He said a few things that enlivened the discussion but said little overall. After the class finished, the professor came up to him and said,

"This is more of a want-to-know on my part, but I would like to hear your account of what happened last night if you are willing to share."

"I was getting very unsteady on my feet, and my vision was swimming. Steffan and his henchmen could see that and were enjoying it. I could hear it in their voices. He said, 'Good night, John-boy' and was about to punch me when this figure blazed in and kicked him in the stomach and then hit him in the chest. It looked human but had weird-colored skin, royal blue, dark green, and black and some crest-type, Mohawk-looking device on its head. Its hands had little claws on them. I was startled, but its help bought me time to drag myself over to the call box. After pressing the button, I saw that it was beating on Steffan's friends. I think I blacked out and then woke up to a security officer shining a light in my face. Security didn't believe my story at first, but then Steffan and his friends corroborate it. If I could, I would thank it for saving me."

Charlotte overheard this with mouth agape. _Someone really laid down the law. I wonder who._ A half-formed thought rose in her mind but raced away when she tried to catch it. Shrugging her shoulders, she headed off to her Russian history class and heard an interesting lecture on Peter the Great. She contemplated beard taxes as she made her way to her usual table in the deserted area on the fourth floor to study her Chinese.

The radicals and characters for the practice set flowed from her pen. Stroke order had not been easy to learn, but she found it beneficial in recognizing unfamiliar characters. As she wrote _ni hao_ for the umpteenth time, her mind wandered to what she heard after her literature class. _What if it were an actual robot? How could it move so fast?_ She looked down and saw that her brain had commanded her hand to write "ast" rather than the correct finishing strokes. She crossed it out and wrote the characters again, this time focusing on what she was doing.

Charlotte looked up at the clock. _12:30. Lunchtime_. She hastily loaded her notebook into her backpack and headed for Ketter. She loaded chicken salad onto a croissant before making a spinach salad. _No grapes _or_ feta? What a bummer. Oh well, it's food. _She sat down and ate her lunch while reading _The Princess Bride_ for the twelfth time. Time got away from her, and during the middle of Fezzik's childhood, she discovered she had one minute to get to her calculus class that was four minutes away. She grabbed her backpack and sprinted across campus, breathlessly entering the classroom two minutes late.

The professor gave her a look that said, "You? Of all the people in class?" and motioned her to a seat after taking her homework. _Please let them be right._ The professor launched into an explanation of integration by partial fractions. _Do my eyes look as glazed-over as I feel?_ She nevertheless persevered in taking notes, hoping that soon the jargon would make sense. Relief washed over her after the class finished. _Done for the day!_

She strolled back to her dorm and plunked her backpack on floor by her desk and pondered what she should do next. She changed into athletic gear and headed to gym for a round of racquetball. To her disappointment, all the courts were full, but she asked a pair about to head in, and they agreed to a cutthroat game. She and one of the players were close in their moderate skill levels, while the other one played like he was born holding a racquet. The scores of the third game stood at 9-7-6, and Charlotte was serving. She hit her specialty, a shot that floated near the wall and proved difficult to return, earning her the top spot for now. She ran back, getting out of the way of one of the players so he could hit it.

He gave it a gentle tap, and it barely hit the wall before the second bounce. Charlotte rushed to no avail.

"That was sneaky," she said, pointing her racquet at him, "I'll have to use it on someone else, maybe even you." He chuckled, retrieved the ball, and served. A lengthy volley ended with the server gaining a point, nearly tying the game. As he served again, a peculiar sound reverberated in the court. A split second later, its cause was made evident when the ball landed with a hollow-sounding hit on the floor and gave a few small bounces. The server walked to it, picked it up, and nodded slowly as he examined it. A blue flap of rubbery material fell to the floor.

"Does either of you have another ball?"

"No," chorused Charlotte and the other player.

"Game and match over. Looks like I win," he replied. After a round of high-fives, the three went their separate ways. Swinging her racquet, Charlotte headed for her dorm, her mind and body refreshed by the exertion. She grabbed her Chinese homework and headed for the basement. The match had done something to her neural wiring. _These radicals are making sense at last!_ It seemed that the lines were drawing themselves. She was in the flow of things.

After completing her assignment, she went ahead in the book and copied down more characters. _Might as well take advantage of this._ She paused and looked at the clock on the wall. 6:10. _Time to eat_. She ran back up to her room, where her roommate stood waiting sternly.

"Hey, Angel. I was about to head to Ketter. Do you want to come with me?"

"No. I was _going_ to have some ravioli, but I can't find the can I'm positive I had. I guess I'll have to settle for something_ else. _Not everyone is on the 18-meals-a-week plan."

"Oh, that. I missed the closing time for Ketter last night, and all I could find from my stuff was a sort of mushy apple and hard peanut butter crackers. You said that if I had an emergency, I could take something from you as long as I told you and paid you back. 'member?"

"Well, you didn't tell me or leave a note or some money."

"I was in a hurry this morning and away for most of the day. My last class was Calculus II, so I came back in a fog."

Angel breathed a dramatic sigh. "Don't let it happen again."

_Why so grouchy?_ Charlotte thought as she grabbed her ID and copy of _The Princess Bride_ and strode to the dining hall. _Mmm. French Dip sandwiches and fries._ She carried her plates, bowl, and cup to an empty two-person table. _Yuck. Someone left a mess. _She used some napkins to wipe it up. After throwing the napkins away, she picked up the silverware she didn't previously have enough hands to get and returned to her table. As she ate, she delved back into Fezzik's childhood, simultaneously laughing and cringing at his parents' actions.


	3. Chapter 3

Charlotte closed her book with a small smile on her face. The Sicilian Crowd never failed to amuse her with its antics. She put her dishes on a conveyor belt, waved to the person scanning IDs, and walked back to her room. She stood in thought for a few seconds and then picked up her backpack and calculus text. Crystal acknowledged her entrance into Math Lab with a slight nod. Since Crystal was busy, Charlotte sat down next to another tutor and soon immersed herself in figuring out, or at least attempting to make some sense, this new method of integration.

A frustrating fifty minutes passed, and Charlotte felt like she was trying to take down the Wall of China with a toy hammer. She excused herself for a drink of water to clear her mind. As she stood up, she was reminded of how much water she had consumed at supper, and so she made her way to the toilets. The door groaned in protest as she pushed it. After washing her hands, she pulled on the door handle, but the door held fast. She tried to push it and pulled it again for good measure, but it wouldn't budge. She checked between the edge of the door and the jamb; the door had not been locked. _Why won't you open, you dumb door?_ She pounded on it and waited, but she heard nothing. She waited an agonizing half-minute before knocking again. _Who would have thought I needed to knock on a door to get out?_

She yelled for help a few times, but no one responded. _Seriously, this building has _never_ been this deserted._ She kept knocking and yelling. At last, a muffled voice reached her through the thick door.

"Why you yelling? Can't get out?"

"Yes. The door is stuck but not locked. Could you push while I pull?" Charlotte and the mysterious stranger did so, but the door stood obdurate. They reversed actions, but to no avail.

"I'm going to get campus security. I'll be back ASAP."

Charlotte slumped in despair. The people in math lab had to be wondering about her now. She yelled at her parents for making her take the class, the professor for assigning the monstrosity of a problem set, and then Newton and Leibniz for discovering the torturous form of math. _I don't care about derivatives, optimization, or integrals. I want to write!_ She stomped around the bathroom, stewing in her anger. A sudden sensation of calmness washed over her, soon followed by a familiar feeling of power. The power built up in her until she thought her head would burst, and then it suddenly fled, leaving Charlotte curious.

White numbers and words coalesced in her vision. _Upper hydraulics- 100%. Lower hydraulics- 100%. Stasis field generator- 30% charged. Stasis field generator? What's that? _She shook her head, but the numbers stayed. She walked toward the mirror and stopped in surprise steeped in horror. _I-i-is that I?_ Her head was small and had room only for eyes. Her arms were mere metal cylinders with metals spheres midway down for elbows and on the end for hands. Her sides consisted of metal pipes that tapered to a narrow waist. Her legs were similar to the arms. The most bizarre part of it all resided in the frame made by the shoulders and sides. A three-dimensional diamond shape turned slowly, seeming to pulse with power. Charlotte screamed in her mind, but only a few beeps came out from some hidden speaker.

She waved, and the reflection waved back. A torrent of questions tumbled through her brain. _What am I? How'd this happen? Will I be able to change back?_ She tried to breathe to calm herself but found that her new body didn't require oxygen. _I am a robot. I have no clue how, but I am a robot. I would like to turn back to human, but maybe I can get out of here with some special ability._ She faced the door with surprising composure. The diamond spun faster and faster until the text regarding it flashed yellow and read, "Stasis field generator- 85% charged. Release charge soon to maintain integrity."

She took a step, looked left and then right. Carpet, not tile, covered the floor. Research posters hung on the walls. _I made it out! Yes!_ Charlotte heard voices and suddenly looked down. Her body was still a bunch of metal tubing, and that thing rotated in her chest. _I have to change now_. She skittered down the hall and rounded a corner. After making sure no one was watching, she thought _human, human, human. Please let me return to my human form_. A wave of gentle pressure rolled over her. After it receded, she looked down; her hands had returned. She looked around and wondered _Did I shrink, or am I just taller in my robot form?_

She looked around the corner and saw her supposed helper with a duo of campus security officers. He shouted a warning, and then the three gave a hearty shove. The door opened a little but let its displeasure at the fact be known by an annoying squeak. Three more pushes opened the door. He called for her and then returned to the hall with a puzzled expression, saying something like, "I know I heard someone here."

Charlotte walked toward the three and said, "Thanks for getting the door open. Did you figure out why it was stuck?"

Two of the men stared at her, but a security officer said, "It looked like there was some buildup on the hinges. We'll clean off the pins and replace them."

The one who had gone for help had sufficiently recovered from his surprise and asked, "How did you get out?"

"It's, um, ah, something weird happened, and I found myself in the hall. I'm not sure I can explain it. Still, thanks for getting help. Someone would have gotten stuck in there anyway, so it's a good thing the hinges are getting a cleaning," she replied.

"Um, sure, you're welcome," he said, still blinking residual shock out of his eyes.

Charlotte looked up at the clock and then rushed to the math lab. Had so much time elapsed? Her other tutor had started to help another student, but Cryss was available, so she moved her backpack and supplies over by her.

"Girl, what happened to you? I was getting so nervous."

"I got stuck in the bathroom. The hinges on the door needed a good cleaning. Could you help me figure out yet another method of integration?" The evening's session did not go very smoothly, so by the time math lab had finished, Charlotte was thoroughly aggravated and tired. She trudged back to her room and then decided to watch TV in the basement. No one was using it, so she turned it to a mind-numbing show that would allow her to laugh without thinking too much. She left to get her water bottle during a commercial break and came back partway through a special announcement.

_-shows a robot or vigilante dressed as one coming to the aid of a student. Mr. Steele lent the police the footage for analysis. Enhancement showed a robot design similar to that of the new Shredder robot soon to be made by World Aeronautics and Robotics. Counts at WAR headquarters showed no missing stock, so until information to the contrary is found, it is presumed the Shredder was a vigilante dressed as one. Anyone with more information is asked to call the police or Silent Observer. Bob Starker, Channel 6 nightly news._

The show resumed, and the slapstick humor allowed Charlotte's mind to unwind. She felt far calmer after it finished. She returned to her room to study her Chinese, but her head drooped halfway through her repetitions. A shower revived her somewhat, but the moment soon passed, and she was back to yawning. She set her alarm, crawled into bed, and soon fell asleep. During the night, she dreamed of her escape from the bathroom, but the bathroom exited to the outdoors, where students wearing engineering and math t-shirts were beating up one of her classmates. She shot upright, breathing heavily. After a few minutes, she felt sufficiently calm to attempt sleeping again. As her head touched the pillow, a thought wormed its way up to consciousness. _What if _I _were the one who saved John?_


	4. Chapter 4

Charlotte attended her classes in a fog the next day while the events of the previous evening replayed in her mind. _Somehow I have this odd ability. How did it happen? What can, no, what SHOULD I do with it? Will it go away? If I did save John, why don't I remember anything about it?_ To her frustration and to the frustration of those around her, she went over the questions again and again, so she was unable to focus on anything else until Professor Lang's voice pierced her reverie.

"Miss Galbraith, I will see you in my office after class." Her classmates were staring at her. She shook her head and looked at the board, where the professor had written an example of the Heaviside Method. She looked down at her notes, and the empty page stared back at her. _I'm really out of it. I didn't even write on autopilot._

Suddenly aware of the professor's look, she responded, "Yes, Professor Lang," and started furiously scribbling down the contents of the board, her face flushed with embarrassment. The rest of the class went slightly better for her, but between robots and the meeting with the professor fast approaching, she had trouble focusing. After class finished, she gathered her supplies and waited for Professor Lang at his office while he dealt with a classmate's question. He arrived, unlocked the door, and motioned her in. Charlotte sat and fidgeted while her pulse pounded in her temples.

"Do you realize that I called on you three times in class today?" he began.

"Um, no professor. I apologize for being so out of it," she replied in a nervous manner.

"Would you tell me why you were so 'out of it' today?"

"That attack two nights ago on the student has been…occupying my mind as of late. I'm in literature with John-Paul, and he came in the morning after the fight. He looked terrible…so many bruises. I-I saw the start of the attack- "

"And you didn't report it immediately to campus safety?"

"I was frozen in horror and had trouble thinking of a call box nearby." Charlotte went numb at the memory.

"And so you feel responsible for his getting beaten up?"

"Maybe that's it. I need to quit wasting energy on this regretful state of mind because there was no way I'd tangle with those four." _That's true, I think._

"And now that we have solved that, do you have any questions about today's material?"

"Well, since I zoned out, I could use a brush up on it."

Forty minutes later, Charlotte found out why not many took advantage of Professor Lang's office hours. Answering her questions had taken 15 minutes, but tangents and stories added another 25 minutes. She learned that he liked kites and had been a champion kite fighter in Japan, China, or whatever Asian country he called his homeland. She didn't pay attention and didn't care to ask again. He had shown her pictures of him in action, lingering on an admittedly impressive shot of his and opponent's kites crashing into the ground in a tangle. Another tangent turned into a rant on Asian cuisine as imagined by Americans.

"-so open-minded, yet they eat only orange chicken and Mongolian beef. People back in the homeland eat squid and octopus, not this outlandish quasi-cuisine!" Charlotte nodded slowly, trying to hold back the urge to throw up. She nearly lost it when he offered her a dried tentacle. She shook her head, and he retracted his arm and popped the tentacle into his mouth with an indignant sniff.

She focused her attention on a figurine on his desk, trying to ignore the smell of the tentacle and the sound of Professor Lang's chewing. He saw her stare and interpreted it as interest.

"That's an original model of the Jaguar robot, a gift from my good friend Ibrahim. He designed it back when, and now it's the most-commonly used HAR. It's agile and strong. Ib sure has some talent."

The mention of robots sent Charlotte's mind back to the previous night, and she couldn't resist trying to find out more about robots.

"HAR? What's that?"

"You DON'T know about it? It's the hottest technology there is. Human-assisted robots, or HARS, are the wave of the future. A person, or pilot, is unconscious, but his mind controls the robot body like his own. The connection is so strong that when the robot is damaged, the pilot feels pain. It's merely an illusion, though. The pilot is perfectly safe." Charlotte digested this in silence while Professor Lang talked animatedly about materials and methods. For some reason, this sent him back to his childhood again.

"I remember being thrilled when I got a truck with plastic wheels that spun so well. The one before that was wood with wood wheels that barely turned. It was such an advance for me, but I wonder what happened to the wood truck. Trucks…such good toys for boys. I could never understand why so many girls played with dolls. House? What a dumb game! I was so glad to be introduced to kite fighting. The thrill of competition…"

_Far away he rambles on. I feel my throat grow dry. Then I wonder _Should I laugh or cry?

In a quiet moment, Charlotte thanked Professor Lang for his time and scooted out of his office. She slowly ambled back to her dorm, her mind aflutter with a tangle of thoughts. Kites wove their ways between squid and robot, derailing her thought process. She glanced at a call box, and the Night exploded into conscious thought. Images flew by: cowering behind a tree, creeping forward, the alleyway by the dorm. Suddenly, the video shown on the news replayed but from a first-person perspective. _She_ was punching him in the chest and tearing his expensive shirt. The eyes of Steffan's friends widened in terror at _her _approach. _She_ had left them in a bruised heap and stalked back to the dorm.

Charlotte looked around and found herself climbing the stairs to her room. There was an hour and a half before she had to eat. _What to do, what to do?_ A thought suddenly came to her. She gathered her ID, keys, and pepper spray and shoved them into a pocket before rushing out of the dorm. She set a brisk pace and, after twelve minutes of walking, entered the cemetery, where she slowed down, caught her breath, and read a few tombstones. _I wonder what these people's lives were like. _Continuing at a slower pace, Charlotte walked to the back of the cemetery, where open ground was still available. She looked around; _Good. No one around. Still, I ought to double check._

She stood behind a big gnarled oak and concentrated. _ Let's see if I can do this voluntarily. Okay, show me the robot. _A frustrating interval passed, and Charlotte felt nothing. _How do I do this? Maybe I need to gather agitation._ Images of John-Paul, her calculus book, and the women's bathroom came up, followed by familiar feelings of frustration. _Fan the flame. Fan the flame._ She started feeling stronger and taller, and then the sensation passed just as it peaked. Her hand was now a sphere, and a diamond shape rotated in her chest cavity. The numbers in her vision reported hydraulic strength and stasis field activator power, among other statistics. _Sweet! I'm a robot!_

A squirrel chattered several feet away. Even as a robot, Charlotte still had her human mind, and that mind hated squirrels. _Time for a surprise, Sciure._ She sent power to the stasis field generator, and its rpm increased so that her display showed it at 60 percent charge. She was surprised that the discharge didn't teleport her like it had previously. _Wouldn't I go a shorter distance?_ She looked at the squirrel, and it was frozen in the act of biting an acorn. It didn't budge as she approached; when she touched it, however, it ran in a blur to the top of the oak tree.

A breeze swayed the treetops, giving Charlotte an idea. _I wonder if…_ She gave another cautious look around and saw a car turn in the main drive. She scurried behind the tree and watched as the car slowed, stopped, and disgorged its driver. An old man shuffled to a grave in the second row and stood quietly with his head bowed for several minutes. It might have been Charlotte's imagination, but she thought she saw a tear slowly descend his cheek as he placed a bouquet of lilies on the ground in front of a tombstone. After he had gone, she stepped out again and walked toward a maple sapling. The generator spun faster and faster, and Charlotte released it at a 72 percent charge. The sapling froze, while three nearby still bent with the breeze. After forty seconds, the tree began to bend with the wind again. _Hmm…this could prove useful._

Her robot form gave her heightened awareness of her surroundings. She sensed a human presence before she saw it. A woman stood with her back turned to Charlotte. While running, Charlotte charged the stasis field generator and discharged it, and she stood behind the tree again. The word "Transforming" displayed itself in white in her vision as the power ebbed. She sighed and then realized that she had made a human sound. _Yep. Five fingers on two hands. I guess I have to build up endurance to stay a robot longer. Yes, that's my next project._

She strolled back and ate dinner in an uncharacteristically absent-minded state, even missing the card-swiper's call "Good-night." Once she got back to her room, she grabbed her computer and hightailed it to a deserted corner in the basement, where she looked up World Aeronuatics and Robotic's website. _Mission statement, no. Values, no. People, no. Products, hmm. That could be it._ She clicked on the "Products" button and then the "Machinery" sub-menu. _What did Professor Lang call them? _As she thought this, her eyes alit on "HARs." _Bingo. _She looked at the current models and explored the information for each, writing down potentially useful robots. She found out that she had turned into the Chronos 'bot. _I can stop time with the Stasis Activator? How about that? I can make holes in matter with no lasting damage? Sweet._

Charlotte made three lists of robots:

Definitely master:

Chronos (duh)

Shredder

Electra

See if I can change into it once:

Gargoyle

Flail

Katana

Jaguar

Don't Bother:

Thorn

Pyros

Exhaustion followed closely the trail of triumph. _All that teleporting tired me out._ Charlotte turned off her computer while stifling the urge to yawn. She trudged back upstairs and took a shower to wash away her tension. She fell asleep quickly but dreamed vividly of robots.


	5. Chapter 5

Charlotte spent a good fraction of the next day in the cemetery practicing. _Maybe that list was optimistic. Mastering one robot form is a challenge. _She had spent a few hours practicing her abilities that didn't involve the stasis field generator. She found out that she had far more endurance and speed as a robot than as a person. It proved useful when a group of people came in for a burial near the back of the cemetery. As the stream of cars approached, she realized that she stood a good chance of being seen, so she sprinted for the scrubby patch of trees even farther away. _Now why didn't I teleport?_

As she settled in, Charlotte heard a scraping noise and then felt a flash of pain in her left leg. _Robots feel pain? Weir-Wait, I remember. The HAR acts as the pilot's body, so of course scratches could cause pain. I ought to be careful._ She kept glancing at the group assembled at the grave, wishing it would leave. After a particularly long wait, she peered around a tree trunk and saw people stirring. _Are they bored or leaving?_ One turned and looked at the scrub area and seemed to lock eyes with Charlotte. She pulled herself back behind the tree with a few beeps of alarm. Yes, the mourner had been looking at the copse but with a vacant expression and possibly not even at her directly. _Yeah, that's it._ Still, a sense of unease hung over her.

A noise reached her, and she hazarded another look. The crowd slowly dispersed. _ Just how long was that? With all the fancy gizmos and abilities I have right now, one of them should be a clock._ Something roused her from her thoughts. She sensed a presence and then looked from behind the tree. The mourner from earlier was striding purposefully toward her hiding place with head down, a fact for which Charlotte was deeply grateful. _Time to teleport._ She sent energy toward the stasis field generator until her display read "88 percent charged."

The mourner was frighteningly close now. Charlotte saw a large tree a distance to her left. She focused and released the generator's energy on herself. She now was behind the tree, thankful for its bulk. She crouched down and looked through the brown stems of some dead plant. The mourner circled her previous hiding place, muttering in a puzzled manner. She shrank back, uttering a wish for solitude that was granted soon after. A voice called the mourner, who turned back toward the cemetery, casting one last bewildered look at Charlotte's former hiding spot.

Once Charlotte was satisfied that she was again alone, she stepped out of the scrub and resumed practice. She focused on differentiating between teleporting and freezing objects and found that teleporting required more conscious thought and was more likely to happen at higher energy. For a final challenge, Charlotte charged the stasis field generator to 92 percent and then released it at a squirrel. A minute and a half elapsed before the animal was able to move again. She felt herself tiring and transformed back to her usual self. Because of the intense session, she sat under an oak tree for a while before heading back to her dorm.

Over the coming weeks, Charlotte refined her robotic abilities. She found that practicing any more than thrice a week taxed her body too much. Her progress as Chronos pleased her; she could practice two hours at a time without adverse affects. She could hold the stasis field generator at 95 percent charge for a full half minute. She had no idea how that would help, but she thought it cool.

Her teleporting distance increased to 80 feet. On accident, she discovered she could teleport small objects and animals. A ladybug was the unwitting first subject. Small objects would stay frozen up to about two minutes.

Charlotte's newfound ability gave her a zest for her work. She contributed more in class and blazed through her reading assignments. Even calculus made more sense to her. She still visited the math lab, but she spent less time talking with Cryss about integrals and more about other topics. She was really falling into the college work habit.

Still, Thanksgiving break proved a welcome respite. She would get to see her family and enjoy its company. _But what should I say about The Ability? Not everyone can keep a secret._ She went through her mental list of relatives and finally decided _That's it. It would be hard to keep the blabbermouths from finding out, so I'll tell no one. Getting time to practice will require some creativity._ After hours of driving, she pulled into her parking place at the house she still considered her home, and the siblings who had been watching at the window poured out to greet her.

Her younger sister pouted a little at having to share "her" room with her sister, forgetting that Charlotte had that room to herself originally and accepted the addition of a sister to ease the congestion in another bedroom. She tromped through h the woods and rediscovered the small clearing she had enjoyed when she was younger. When her younger brother asked her why she was smiling, she replied,

"I have good memories of this place and am glad to have the opportunity to come here more often." She didn't mention her plans for it this break. That kid, of all her family, had the largest mouth, and the more important he thought the news, the sooner he told it. After dinner that evening, she enjoyed a game night with her family. Wits and Wagers, Balderdash, and Cranium all got their turns, and later, she and her siblings played on the Wii, forcing the parents into a few rounds of Just Dance 3. Their performance of "Da Funk" held a lot of humor for Charlotte, and even the most tolerant of her siblings gave several aside glances at her raucous laughter.

Charlotte enjoyed being home. She needed the craziness of her family to help her recuperate from the craziness of college. Still, she wanted to spend time alone, which was hard to find because all her family members understandably wanted to do things with her after she had been gone for months. The next day, after the huge Thanksgiving lunch, older family members relaxed in the living room, while younger ones ran amok on the property. Charlotte seized the opportunity and rushed to the meadow in the woods.

She first spent several minutes making sure no one had followed her. Satisfied that no one knew where she was, she started her by practicing her moves as Chronos. A starling took to the sky while the stasis field generator charged. Charlotte released the energy but missed the bird. A tall spruce tree took the blow, such as it was, and briefly ceased swaying. _Uh-oh. That tree can be seen from a way off. Be careful, woman!_

Charlotte settled back to being human while pondering her next move. Thoughts of the woodstove filled her head. She remembered gathering sticks and logs to burn in it and how she would always come home whining and crying about how tired she was. The air was turning nippy, and she shivered. However, a warming-up idea had occurred due to her wandering thoughts. She got the picture in her head and set her mind to do it. When she looked down the next time, she saw that broad triangular blades had replaced her hands. Her body and legs looked whatever the robotic equivalent of ripped was. _Excellent._

_If I remember correctly, there is a stand of dead and dying trees nearby. Let's go find it._ After a few false turns, the scene before her matched the one in her head. Charlotte walked over to a tree that had fallen a year and a half ago and gave it a hesitant tap with the side of her blade. It slid in eight inches. _I could get used to this._ She pulled it out and, a mighty swing, and the roots separated from the rest of the tree. She went down the length of the trunk, dividing it into segments a foot and a half long.

Using her feet, Charlotte rolled out individual sections, tipped them on their sides, and cut them into eighths. Her blades, however, couldn't stack the logs, and she debated whether to leave them as is, a semi-organized pile, or stack them as her father had showed her. Her blade pulsed, and the text displayed in her vision read, "Recommend deactivation to avoid excess wear." _I'm really hidden out here, so why not? _ She felt the familiar tingling as she returned to her body. She shivered and looked up at the sky; it was overcast and getting darker. _The joys of late fall._ Charlotte slowly jogged home, and a figure followed at a distance.

Okay, I feel that the whole woodcutting scene was odd at best. In case there are those of you who are not familiar with Just Dance 3, the song "Da Funk" has dancers dressed as robots.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: _A Hazard of Hearts _is a real book. If you have the opportunity to read it, take advantage of it. It's a love story with class.

Charlotte's Thanksgiving weekend flew past in a pleasant blur people, places, and memories. She had not been able to practice more because she spent so much time meeting people she hadn't seen in some time. Once she safely returned to her dorm, she sat down and planned out the next two weeks. A few classes had one last test before finals, while another had a final portfolio project. She started the long editing process for her portfolio, combining parts of documents into one long paper, adding transitions to make the topics flow into each other. Once she was satisfied with her progress on that, she switched to Chinese, forcing herself to recall what seemed to her to be umpteen characters in contexts that made sense. That left her thoroughly tired and she fell into bed early.

The long night of rest did her good. She stayed focused even during a particularly taxing calculus lesson on differential equations. Taking advantage of this state of mind, Charlotte started one of her last calculus sets right after class. Although most of the problems were doable, the finer parts of a few challenged her, so she sought Professor Lang's help. She double-checked the office hours on his door and nearly knocked but saw him doing something odd. He was playing with HAR action statues like a little boy. Some of his more energetic dialogue slipped under the bottom of the door.

"Watch me fly, Flail!" he said in a fast, higher-pitched voice.

"I'm going to wrap a chain around your neck and squeeze until you say, 'uncle'!" he replied in an artificially deep voice. Charlotte stepped away from the door and doubled over with silent laughter. A few other professors walked by, bemusedly shaking their heads. Professor Lang's reputation as an odd one had long been cemented. Once Charlotte regained control of herself, she slowly approached the window in the door and, once Professor Lang's activity died down, announced her presence by knocking.

"Come on in," Professor Lang said, not at all embarrassed that Charlotte had heard him in his little-boy moment. One of the statues, the Gargoyle, if she correctly remembered her research, lay on its side on the desk with a wing stretched to the sky.

"So, I see that Earth beat Air," Charlotte said by way of introduction.

"Ah, yes," he chuckled, "I always did like swinging the chain. When you're up against a Gargoyle, nothing is better than the Flail."

"What about Pyros? It can fly too."

"Ah, you've been doing your research. I still disagree. Pyros is slower than molasses in many things. Its best option is to hold back and spit out its flame. That flame, however, is waist-high, and that doesn't protect much against air attacks. Flail can wrap its chain around a Gargoyle's leg and bring it crashing to the ground. One of my most effective techniques."

A corner of Charlotte's mouth twitched. That her math professor at one point piloted an HAR was new to her but not at all surprising. The man flew fighter kites as a kid. How could he not embrace something even more active? She decided to probe him more about his HAR background.

"You like Flail. Are there any other HARs that you use?"

"Because my buddy Ibrahim designed the Jaguar robot, I got to test it and help work out flaws. It's a solid all-around piece of machinery. There's nothing quite as exhilarating as grabbing something while you flip and throwing it into a wall. Come to think of it, that's probably why I don't use it much these days. It's so much fun to destroy things, even more fun than teaching calculus!" He laughed heartily.

"Are there any other robots you like?"

"Other robots? Oh, yes. Electra has good special moves and is moves fast. It needed a special testing chamber because it kept shorting the circuits in the usual one. Katana is the second-most-well balanced robot, although it tends slightly toward strength. It's used as a guard 'bot in more dangerous situations and also in HAR combat. Oh, those blades are dangerous. I saw one slice a Pyros in two. For all the fun I make of Gargoyle, it has very good abilities. They're used as sentries and can make up their light weight with a surprise attack. Criminals breaking into places have been knocked unconscious by a hit from those robots. Gargoyles are also used in some places as a high-speed, short-range delivery system. There's no bothering with streets or cars. Just hop and glide from building to building."

Charlotte couldn't resist asking, "What about Chronos?"

"That's a useful robot, but I never could master it. Teleporting and the like required far too much concentration from me. Charging and discharging the stasis field generator drained me fast. No, I prefer blunt force," he said with a pleased smile.

"I had questions on this set of homework. I enjoyed hearing your perspectives on HARs, but I need to finish my homework. Could you help me with these problems from chapter 9?"

"Ah, back to the business at hand. Which ones are they?" Charlotte left his office with most of her questions answered. Slope field still were shrouded in mystery, but she felt she would do well on the homework set as well as the final. The session had drained her energy, so she read her guilty pleasure book, _A Hazard of Hearts_, over dinner. Vicariously experiencing a life so unlike her own gave her the chance to relax and recuperate her energy for the upcoming week. She returned to her portfolio project and worked on it until her head hit the keyboard for the fifth time. She slept well that night.

The rest of the week passed by fast. With so much to do, Charlotte had gone out for only one practice session. _ I hope robotic fitness doesn't fade as fast as cardiovascular fitness ._She had made it count, repeatedly charging and discharging the stasis field generator. She barely escaped detection when a vehicle drove toward the rear of the cemetery and parked. She ran part of the way to the scrub brush and teleported the last bit of distance to a hiding place. She watched the old man from weeks before walk to a gravestone and put a new bouquet of flowers by it. He stood there sadly for a few minutes before returning to the vehicle and driving off.

_Well, that's it for now. I need to be more careful. I'm can't depend totally on my coloration and teleportation ability to keep me out of trouble. Besides, the computer is constantly reminding about the hydraulic pressure. _She transformed out of her robot body and noticed that she was sweating and scraped up. She hadn't noticed that she'd bumped a log in her rush to conceal herself. _What a workout! At least that annoying beep has gone away._

Before going to eat, Charlotte wrote an email to her family, telling her that she missed them and would see them the next Thursday. She had enjoyed her semester, but coming home for Thanksgiving reminded her how much she relied on them when she was stressed. She felt guilty for not contacting them more, especially after The Ability cropped up. The guilt redoubled when she realized she had kept something so large away from the people who knew everything else about her. _You'll stay anonymous, and so will they. It's better that way. _

She started to read _A Hazard of Hearts_ while eating, but her mind drifted to her family again. _I'll have to tell them at some point. It's not fair to keep them in the dark. I wish, though, that it would stay among only us. I've had enough of crazy science majors for the year; I don't want to be their next experiment. Maybe I'll wait until the end of the school year. Then they could have all summer to get used to it. Yeah, I'll do that._

Finals week came. Charlotte's Chinese final ran from 12:30 to 2:30 on Monday. In an uncharacteristic breaking of her own rule, she reviewed her hanzi at both breakfast and lunch. She felt over prepared but thought that a good thing to be for a final. However, the short answer portion, worth a fifth of the total points, proved difficult. The professor had not gone over a lot of syntax, so she had to flip back to other pages to get an idea of how to formulate her responses. Even with fifteen extra minutes, she felt that the short answer section had not gone particularly well and left the classroom with a pit in her stomach.

She tried to distract herself by doing some initial packing, but it didn't work. _Time for a run. I'm sick of having to sneak around to work out. _As she pounded the pavement, she reviewed for her next final, Calculus II. Varieties of integrating techniques were brought up and examined. She tried to solve different integrals from the sheet Professor Lang gave near the beginning of the semester, but she found it required too much concentration. She re-solved some problems from the sections on differential equations to get the method firmly placed in her mind. She returned to her dorm strangely exhilarated.

She ate dinner quickly and then rushed to Math Lab. Crystal greeted her with a smile.

"Inmate Galbraith reporting to release officer," Charlotte said with a salute.

"You have such a healthy perspective on the situation."

"I'm having issues with differential equations and slope fields, so cut me some slack."

"Let's start from the top of the semester. Math classes build on each other." The first chapters did not take long because, as Crystal pointed out, Charlotte had perfected many of the integrating techniques by using them later in the semester. They spent a longer time on the hyperbolic functions and trig sub. The both their surprise, numerical integration went by easily. Their progress ground to a halt once they reached differential equations. Trying to separate the variables and figure out which one went where frustrated Charlotte to the point of tears. After a brief break, the two studied again, and a few pieces fell into place. Slope fields still remained an enigma for the most part. By this time, the official math lab time had been finished for half an hour.

"Your exam is first thing in the morning. Go to bed and get a good night's sleep."

"For sure. I hope to see you around, Cryss." Charlotte packed her backpack and walked to the exit. She heard shouting and, a few moments later, smelled smoke. Just before she exited, she heard the fire alarms go off. She followed an orange glow with a sinking feeling, and the sight confirmed her fears. The library was on fire. Flames licked up the ornate wood trim by the entrance and, when someone in a mad rush out opened the door, started burning the flooring and wood in the vestibule.

A fire truck pulled up, but a way had to be cleared of students, bikes, and the barriers that normally prohibited vehicular access. Moving the horror-struck students took a minute, and because of that, the fire grew rapidly. It consumed the furniture in the vestibule and moved into the main body of the library. _All those books…reduced to ash._ Like everyone else, Charlotte watched with equal parts awe and horror. She stood close enough to the firefighters' makeshift control center to hear their chatter.

"People are still in the building. Send in more units."

She watched them pore over blueprints, trying to find the best entrances and escape routes. She looked back at the library. The old building was burning even more furiously. She wanted to go but felt compelled to stay. Stress, sadness, and anger twined through each other. Charlotte felt as though she would burst, and suddenly her feet were free. She sprinted away to the north side of the library, hid in the bushes, and allowed the feeling of power to express itself.

The familiar numbers hung in her vision as she charged the stasis field generator. _I'm going in!_ Smoke filled the room, although the floor tiling in the middle of the library was slowing the flames. Charlotte looked around and saw a person huddled in a corner staring at the flames with fear-filled eyes. She jumped and screamed when Charlotte touched her. _I can't blame her. I just hope she trusts me enough to let me get her out._ Charlotte's lack of hands made grabbing her difficult, so she finally wrapped her arm around her neck and dragged her to the north wall.

Charlotte charged the stasis field generator, letting build up more than she usually would. _ I hope it's enough_ she thought as she focused the energy on herself. She and the other woman were outside in the night air. Gasps greeted their arrival.

"It's really real!"

"Those are the same colors as the one from a few weeks ago."

Charlotte did her best to ignore the comments as she walked the other person to safety. She had tested her ability to teleport herself and found she could do it at as low a charge as 65 percent. _I'm going to need that ability tonight._ She teleported back into the library to find that the flame had conquered the tile and was steadily crawling north. She ran through the library, hoping she was more heat-resistant than those she was trying to help. A moan of pain reached her, and she redoubled her efforts to find people. A man lay on the ground with a gash in his head and arm at an odd angle. She pulled him to his feet and started to drag him to safety, but soon he was walking under his own power. Once they were out, he gave her an odd look, as though she was familiar to him, but she soon forgot about it.

A crash interrupted her next effort to get in. A floor beam had been so weakened and warped by the fire that part of the second floor tilted, and a bookcase broke through the exterior wall. Charlotte thought about teleporting but decided to save her energy instead. She ran, but a corner of the shelf scraped her right shoulder and stasis field generator. A warning flared in her vision: "Discontinue usage of stasis field generator to prevent further damage." _I'm sorry, but I can't._ The hole in the wall was too high for her to access, so she teleported back in.

Smoke and flame now filled the whole floor, so Charlotte had trouble finding people. She kicked in the stairwell door and ran to the second floor. A figure lay on the ground, apparently unconscious. As she moved closer, Charlotte realized it was Crystal. _I'm going to get you out of here, no matter what it takes. _ After checking Crystal for injuries, she hoisted her into her arms and walked to the north wall. After a few seconds of debate, she decided to jump out the hole in the wall. She had to leap a three-foot gap, land directly on an uneven, eight-inch wide section of wall, and immediately jump ten or so feet to the ground.

Holding whatever passed for breath, Charlotte ran and leaped. Her leg scraped a brick in the wall, and another damage reading came to her vision. _ Not now. _She felt something shift in her leg as she landed on the ground. _Not good, but Cryss is safe._ She glanced around and saw the crowd fronted by reporters and video cameras, all with eyes wide and mouths agape. _How am I going to get out of this?_ she wondered as she teleported back in. The stasis field generator warning flashed again with the addendum "Partial periphery control destruction, beta face." Another warning joined it: "Hydraulic damage lower right leg."

Charlotte was getting nervous now. She was testing the limits of Chronos in what was for some a life-and-death situation. She passed through the first floor quickly, finding only lifeless bodies, but there would be time to mourn later. She limped up the stairs to the second floor. As she passed the elevator, she heard more moans. The car seemed to be trapped between floors, so she hurried to the fourth floor. _ Where are the firefighters? Have they given up?_

She tried to pry the doors open but in the end had to smash through them, doing some damage to her not-hands. She jumped onto the car, pried the exit door off with her feet, and dropped into the middle of four surprised people. One of them spoke up.

"You here to help?" Charlotte nodded, although she wondered how much help she could be. Her stasis field generator was damaged. She grabbed the person closest to the door and teleported out. "Total periphery control damage, beta face." _No, no, no! Especially not now! What's going to happen? _ She made a gesture which she hoped the person interpreted as "stay" and rushed back to the stairs, falling when the floor buckled again. "Hydraulic damage increased, lower right leg." _Arrgh!_

Charlotte repeated the process for the other three, and by the time she finished, the periphery controls were demolished on each of the faces of the stasis field generator, and the delta core was depleted. She couldn't run about 70 percent charge without dire warning messages flashing, and her fine control ability was nearly gone. Her body was scratched and dented. Something in her right leg had snapped, and her right arm's range of motion had decreased. _How am I going to get them out?_

She led them down the stairwell and to the north wall. With little effort, she found the clearest path to the north wall. The fire had diminished in spots, but suffocating heat remained. Charlotte looked back, and the glaze of pain in the people's eyes gave her the resolve to carry through her plans. Willing the pain in her right leg away, she ran full speed into the wall. The bricks gave a little. The warning messages popped up, ever more urgent. She repeated the charge until there was a hole large enough for a person.

She herded the people out the hole and slowly followed them. People gasped at her appearance. Dings and scrapes marred the body, particularly the right side. The stasis field generator was scratched and warped and barely rotated. _I'm in for it._ Just then, an angry scuffle drew everyone's attention. A student had wrested an officer's gun from her and was waving it around while ranting.

"You should have helped my girlfriend! She worked so hard in this library and was trying to save rare books. Why didn't you pull her out or even try CPR?"

"Sir, she was wedged between two shelves, and-"

"No, you didn't try. You didn't even care." He shot the ground, and everyone jumped. _Someone has to stop him, but everyone's too scared. _Charlotte limped until she was right behind him. _Time to help once more._ She pushed her remaining energy to the stasis field generator. The warning appeared at 60 percent charge, and she ignored it, along with the increasing pain. Because her fine control of the generator was gone, the power was flowing in too fast, and she would have very little control over its emission. The only way to attenuate was total discharge. At 85 percent, a trill sounded, and it increased in pitch until the charge reached 92 percent. All eyes were on Charlotte and the student. _And…now!_

The blast was large and messy; it got not only the student but three people near him. At the same time, the shriek of tearing metal made everyone wince and cover their ears. Charlotte fell to her knees and looked down as the numbers in her vision were replaced by the ominous message "Damage limit exceeded." The stasis field generator was stopped with a gaping hole where the seam between the gamma and delta faces used to be. Pain coursed through her as the message faded. There was a collective gasp as she saw her broken human body come into existence. She picked out a few words from the muttering crowd but soon stopped thinking about them as the darkness swallowed her.

I think this is a good ending as is, but I have an idea for a possible epilogue chapter. Would people be interested in reading it?

Thanks for reading!


End file.
